sharing the creative process of artist, illustrator, and book lover, Judy Watson

Holiday doodles

Here are some little watercolour blobs done while on holiday in Portland. Our holiday was short but very sweet…unlike Blob Bird No 3 who is short and short-tempered. These blobs are all just a few centimetres across. I forgot to take a fine brush with me, so I couldn’t get any fine feathering to work. I did birds first, as the 52 Week Illustration theme of the week is ‘feather’ and then I played around with dogs, monsters etc.

After we got home, late yesterday I did some more drawing in bed. I remembered that the shaggy hair on the lower legs of some breeds of horse (like the Clydesdale) are called ‘feather’ so I drew some Clydesdales, and then found myself drawing a Rebellious Teen Pony With Attitude, who also has feathered legs. I rather liked her.

Blob Bird 1

Blob Bird 2 – what a cheery fellow

Blob Bird 3 – a foul mood. He was drawn at the bottom of the page, and no room for a decent pair of pins.

Blob Bird 4 – Also in a foul mood despite his fancy trousers.

Blob Bird 5 – a bit mad I suspect.

We met a pair of swans in a park with a pond and little hire boats with outboard motors that the kids were able to steer. The swans were crazily gorgeous in a bizarre way, and very grumpy. I was watching them for a while and then drew them from memory later. We also saw Mortimer the Raven at the park, with his friend Edgar. I fed Mortimer from my hand and I saw up close that he really does have a hairy beak! Joan Aiken did not lie.

This is one of the cross swans, drawn from a blob. (Also cramped at the bottom of the page with his toes falling off the edge. I’ve added a bit of digital depth of tone to this one. He was pale grey)

One of the swans, from a blob. But he looks quite cheerful here, but I think he may have some goose blood in him.

A page of dog blobs. These worked better than the birds I thought as I had warmed up. (Maybe it was the champagne, or maybe it was the log fire…. hmmm)

Here are the Cross Swans again. These were drawn in bed last night after we came home. I’ve scanned them and coloured them digitally.

This is one of the bed sketches of a Clydesdale. Below is the Teen Pony.

Oh thank you Monica. How kind of you. I must have drawn thousands of horses as a child, but then went many years without drawing any. It has been fun to go back to one of my childhood loves, albeit not the real, soft whiskery-nosed thing :)

Thanks Trevor! That’s wonderful to read. Especially as I intend to try to use some of them in a book series. It will be an interesting process to try to settle on a blob with the most ‘presence’ to act as a main character. I wish I could imagine their voices. I confess I can’t. I’m very visual but not so aural… auditory… (What word should that be?) Thanks for your interesting comment.

Thanks, Clive. Glad you like them. They are fun. When I first started messing about with blobs recently it seemed like magic… Like it couldn’t go wrong. I have found that they can go wrong. But when they work they do have their own small magic :)